All At Once
by KiaForrest
Summary: Missing Moments from Out of Gas Just what happened on the shuttles? Brief, genfic


_**Disclaimer:** I don't own. I just play. Sue if you must. I have $1.59 in the checking account. There are 19 sticky pennies in the change jar, many children on the place and even more cats & plastic fish that might bring you wealth beyond your dreams...or not_

Quotes are from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

**And all at once their breath drew in**  
_We stuck, ne breath ne motion,  
As idle as a painted Ship  
Upon a painted Ocean._

_"You don't have to die alone."_ Inara said.

She didn't want to die. Period. But alone, without companionship, clearly, this terrified her more than death itself. Remembering her impatience, his smile twitched, the worn blanket scratching at his cheek. Everyone had their own fears. Couldn't mock hers when his own made bumps rise on his flesh.

_"Everyone dies alone."_ He'd not been gentle, though he'd tried, truly, not to crush her with the obvious.

The shuttles were away. No power. Fading atmo. Red Button. There, for when his miracle showed up. Malcolm Reynolds denied the existence of miracles, but not the possibility dumb luck just might stumble by, pause with him a spell. Stranger things had happened.

His eyelids drifted closed. Rocking his head in the pilot's seat; he found a comfortable resting place. Peaceful. He'd expected peace to remain all the days of his life, regardless of what happened. When ordered to lay down arms, he let go of that belief, along with faith and promises...

There'd be no bodies surrounding him. Stacked, rotting while he waited. No one else's final moments, screaming for aid, or sudden eternal silence. No speech dredged from his soul to encourage some one to hang on, to hold… to believe. No one looking to him for promises he wasn't willing to make, or able to keep.

He could not – would not – watch this crew turn blue, leaving him one by one, until he was the last damned man. For all his mighty denials, he still hadn't learned how not to hang on, to hold, to believe in miracles - uh, dumb luck.

Alone was as it should be. Peace, not curse, when confronting weakness. Like the red button, Mal allowed for the possibility; took comfort in solitude, just in case. Without expectation, _Serenity_ was motionless, like a sailing ship back in the day imprisoned by the doldrums….

_Down dropt the breeze, the Sails dropt down,  
'Twas sad as sad could be  
And we did speak only to break  
The silence of the Sea._

"It's incense." Inara rolled her eyes when, again, Jayne complained about the smell. "Bark is ground to a fine powder, releasing an essential oil. Lighting _the flame of hope_ is an ancient rite, a derivative-"

"You mean it stinks." Jayne waved his hand in front of his face. Covering the wink he gave the Preacher who was hovering between the cockpit and the shuttle proper.

She swiveled and forced Jayne to jump out of her way or be shouldered, indelicately. "The _fragrance_ reminds us hope expects the flame to warm us to our elements."

"And it stinks up an entire shuttle faster than River can peel labels off'n a can." Jayne dropped to Inara's bed, leaned back on his elbows as if he belonged there.

"I find it soothing." Book assured her, trying not to laugh at Jayne's swagger with the sole purpose to annoy. At least Inara was no longer muttering about fools or shivering so hard it took four tries to light a match.

"Thank you." Inara nodded, drew a breath, attempting to regain the calm center she'd usually possessed without effort.

"So." Jayne stretched across Inara's bed with a smirk. "You gonna make our last hours meaningful? Teach us to chant and find our inner companion?"

"Keep it up and I may shove you out the hatch to find your inner companion." Inara began preparing tea, rattling the lid of the crockery despite her efforts to bring tranquility to the surface. "One less is an attractive option at this moment." 

"You saying ya want to live without _me_?" Jayne rolled, squirmed across the smooth covers to handle items on the small chest next to Inara's bed.

"Whatya use this for?" He palmed a green globe, tossing it between his hands as he sat up. Flecks of gold swirled in a mini-tornado, capturing his attention. "It don't even make noise. It should jingle or something, shouldn't it?"

"Give me that!" Inara shoved him from her bed, using her hip against his shoulder. He was off balance, reaching for a porcelain statue. "I don't want you mauling my things."

Jayne shrugged. "Was just being sociable."

"Nosy is not sociable." Inara tenderly replaced the globe in the filigreed stand. "That orb is older than the Preacher."

"That old huh?" Jayne slouched on the sofa. Opposite end from Kaylee who was gazing at the cockpit, her eyes vacant as River's when she was listening to some notion. "How long does that smell last? I hope it dies before us!"

"Jayne." Book admonished, shaking his head at the man while carrying the tea tray to the low table. Inara knelt on the floor rather than ask Jayne to move over.

"What? We aren't supposed to talk about it?" Jayne grinned at his friend, enjoying the twitch of Book's grin. "Thought you'd be all ready to sermonize us to the next life."

"Kaylee, would you like some tea?" Inara interrupted, grasping for some aid.

"Hmm?" Kaylee didn't quite focus on Inara's desperate face.

"Tea. Would you like some?"

"Oh, none for me - thanks." Kaylee squirmed to her feet, skirted around Book and Inara, to take the pilot's seat. Leaning her elbow on the console so she could rest her chin on her hand, she mourned. "Shouldn't have left her. S'wrong to leave 'em…."

Inara passed the dainty cup to Jayne. He handled it gently, smirking at her. "Did ya think ma taught me nothin' about manners?"

"I can't say I ever thought about it." Inara smiled, generous in the face of his attempts to be … could she think of gentlemanly and Jayne in the same day?

"She brung us up right." Jayne sipped - _sipped_ - the tea. "Though when she lit a flame it was to warm a body or feed it, not to stink up the place."

Inara choked on her tea. Pretending not to notice her mopping tea from her lap, Jayne crossed his ankle over his knee and set the cup on his calf.

"Course on Sabbath day, she liked to kill us all. Bathed herself in the smelly toilet water. I remember once…."

Book followed Kaylee, his hand rested on her shoulder, feeling the ridged tension. "You all right, child?"

"No." Kaylee rubbed her cheek against his hand. "Shouldn't have left my girl. Wrong to abandon her like that. Wrong to abandon _him_ like this."

"Don't believe he looked on it as being abandon." Book smiled at their reflection in the glass.

Her sigh shuddered up his arm, whispered chills across his shoulders. With an unsteady hand, Book stroked her hair. No one quieted him as Kaylee did. Affinity had brushed his heart the minute she spoke to him on Persephone. In her eager smile and hungry, open heart, were hints of what should be. Light he'd begun to doubt found him on a journey he never expected to take. What comfort could he give her, now, when she needed light?

"Reckon he's seen enough of folks dying. He shoved us out the door without so much as a 'nice to know you.' " Kaylee slowly nodded. "Don't want to die out here, without _Serenity_, without … _him_. Not right, this."

"Miracles happen, Kaylee." He didn't doubt that, knew it. Lived it. Offered it to her.

"Then we should wait on our miracle together." Darting a glance across her shoulder, Kaylee used her knee to nudge the wheel, gently re-directing the shuttle.

Her tension evaporated when Book moved his body to block discovery of what she was doing. Behind them, Jayne and Inara continued the artificial debate about the smell and rituals of his ma.

"You sure about this?" The Preacher whispered, doubt nibbling at him as he faced the black.

"More'n sure." She met his troubled gaze, certain where he struggled. Covering his hand with her own, Kaylee sought _Serenity_.

_And every tongue thro' utter drouth  
Was wither'd at the root;  
We could not speak no more than if  
We had been choked with soot._

River hung by her hands. The thin rod of pipe above her lifted her feet off the deck so she could swing back and forth, just enough momentum to feel a breeze in her hair, to find the cadence of blood and muscle. The sunlight was elusive. If she wandered far enough behind, the smell of fresh rain on new cut grass, the stones beneath her bare toes steamed an evocative scent of latent minerals, rising to sting her nose... it was all still there. Behind. Before. Then. Now, reassuring her as then, Simon near, warmer than sun, soft as rain, real as stone. She wanted to tell him not to worry: Time was awakening, autum was rising to the surface of this winter storm, but the words would not find their way from behind, to him. Her hands were not slippery with the sweat of effort. She hung in the black...swinging to the heartbeat to come.

Wash leaned his elbows on his thighs, watching Zoe, observing Simon, smiling at River. Unconcerned with death, alone, in a group or gnawed by cold, his hands linked, fingers gripped one another, circulation flowing, for now. What was inevitable was irrelevant, like a teen-age prank. Nothing mattered except the one phrase, a heartbeat drilling through his veins, "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up…."

For all his training, Simon could barely concentrate on the rise and fall of Zoe's chest. River's body passing near his face distracted him. Of course River would sync with Zoe's breath in _perfect_ rhythm. When had she not been perfect? Simon couldn't remember a time when River wasn't mesmerizing, enchanted in a way that made precocious an obscene label. Even … damaged, she seemed to fit in the universe, as he never quite managed to. He stumbled over his own feet, scraped his knees, hesitated to gasp for breath, apologized for failures not his own. Some part of him vaguely remembered a moment, when he might have been otherwise. But River danced, whispered, and caressed her way, intuitively graceful in the insanity of life … perfect, even now. Hanging. Balanced beside him. Dying on his birthday.

Zoe's gasp was like the fireball scouring _Serenity_.

Wash remembered how to speak. "Zoe?"

Frowning at her husband, her eyes assessed the startled doctor, then skittered across River's restless movements. Swallowing first, she said, "Trouble."

Simon nodded. "You were injured. There was a fire – we're here because there is the possibility we might be discovered-"

"Where's the Captain?" Zoe looked to Wash, smiling in answer to his grin. Their tangible vow that all was as it should be.

"On board _Serenity_." Wash inched his tingling hands to the armrest, waiting.

"Go back." Her eyes fluttered closed, snapped open when Wash continued to gaze at her, unmoving. "Now."

"Shouldn't we wait for his ping?"

"Now." Zoe whispered.

Wash kicked the chair around, satisfied. "Yes dear."

_With throat unslack'd, with black lips bak'd  
Ne could we laugh, ne wail:  
Then while thro' drouth all dumb they stood  
I bit my arm and suck'd the blood  
And cry'd, A sail! A sail!_


End file.
